John

Cakewalk is the name of what we use to call Sonar. CW as a company no longer exists. Bandlab is the new owner. They are giving Cakewalk away free. It is Sonar but much improved.

Cakewalk is an upgraded Sonar Platinum. You should be able to install Sonar X1. However, I would get Cakewalk. It is a much improved Sonar. You can use your old login and password but you can also start fresh and create a new account with Bandlab. There will be things that you wont be able to take advantage of because you did not upgrade to Sonar Platinum. There are more ProChannel modules that were released after X1. Still it is worth it to get Cakewalk anyway.

There is a lot of false information about Windows. Some is from people that want to justify using a different OS. Some is just hate of MS. Often this false information is reposted innocently by people that think they are doing a favor for others. One should be careful about any information one can not verify.

This is the CPU cooler I have. It has two fans that push pull. Very quiet. Cooler master Hyper Cooler D92

DPC latency may be a real problem with Xenos. There is nothing unreliable about any Intel processor.

I think its more about cost. However, an i9 is the new cool kid on the block and is highly desirable. I have heard they can be a little high in DPC latency. i7 are known to provide good performance. I just built an i7 8700 with 16 GB of RAM. I'm happy with it. Panu went for a i9 and seems to be very happy with it. Jim is the best person to ask about what you should get.

I forgot to add mastering is also important for tailoring the output for various media.

Very nice computer indeed. Nice to see you Panu.

Not showing up here? I did an update to BL Assistant too.

Good point Cactus.

Thanks Chuck, I knew about that there is a key to do that but I didn't recall it. Yes I did like it.

Thanks Noel. I thought it was very cool thing to have. More useful in the pre Skylight versions.

I tend to do everything in the project now. That is because I have updated my computer and am able to run a lot more plugins. However one does it / export/import or all in one, the mixing stage is the most important stage where if that is done right the mastering stage is easy. Look upon mastering as polishing the song not doing deep adjustments.

I don't know it this still is in effect but in version 8 we were able to move the widgets around so they would show those we used most on top. I think it was dropped in X1. But I have not tested this or looked around to figured it. The main reason is the Inspector pane. It can show all controls for a track. Sonar 8 did not have the wide Inspector that X1 had and all the version after it.

I did a test shortly after Mix Scenes was available. I wanted to see if I could change the outs in BDF3 and test how the sound was impacted. What I found is it worked very well and I was able to decide the best output configuration using Mix Scenes. The main reason it was useful was that it did not take a long time to switch. I think it is very useful. Because it can deal with just about anything one wishes to A/B. I like Save AS for creating a new project without overwriting the old. This lets me increment my projects over time. I can always go back and start over. Keep in mind a project can have any number of Mix Scenes. They can be for different things. Its a compliment to Save As not a replacement.

Those are called widgets and the area is the track header.

LOL I am older and also like new tech. I also work with other DAWs and other editing programs and like to have a simple way to have a history of what I did. Save as is my preferred method. I use scenes for a/bing different setups within a project.

I agree if that is really what he wants to do. I got the impression he was trying to export an entire project with all its tracks so he could send it to someone. I also agree with how you are using the term stem.

I'm an inveterate project save as person. I like to save a version that is significantly different from the one before. That way I can go back. LOL

Did you check in List View if there is a volume set in the MIDI track?

I may be wrong but what you are asking Cakewalk to do seems on the face not possible. Having just tracks as your output precludes using a master bus. If you want to have the bus and its FX it must be the source for exporting. Checking bus FX wont run the audio through it.

I'm not understanding your question. Could you explain it more? How is Cakewalk inputing to Kontakt?

Thanks for posting.

Sounds good Jim. Again, thank you.

I have always updated going back to the DOS days. With Windows 10 Pro I seek out updates and am happy to get them. I look at is as Windows being constantly improved and made better. Bugs are address. New features are added. Soon we will be getting a huge increase in how many plugins can be loaded. For more information on this read this FLS Slot Limit Increase. I find with every update Windows gets better. Problems get resolved and useful features are added. The notion that these updates are intrusive or a burden I find untrue. Staying current is a good thing to do. Freezing ones OS so that it becomes out of date makes it harder for developers to update their applications to take advantage the new abilities of the OS. MS tries to keep as much compatibility as is possible. But there is a limit to how this will impact future improvements and greater security. We are not paying for all these updates so I can't see a downside.